


19. faith

by Phritzie



Series: Pale Blue Dots [3]
Category: Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: "Bone" "Meal", Brief Tableau of the Vyre's Bloodtithing in the Intro, Canonical Character Death, Consensual Something, Ectoplasm, Ghost (?) Sex (?), Ghost's Ahoy If That Quest Was a Little Bit Nasty, It/Its Pronouns for the Sentient Water Feature, Multi, Other, Runescape + Kinktober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:15:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26763457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phritzie/pseuds/Phritzie
Summary: You know when you put a cat on a diet and they scream at you for food? That but if the cat was Zuul, and somehow more horny.
Series: Pale Blue Dots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941913
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	19. faith

“I can barely move.” 

Velorina held herself in his face. Forced him to see her jagged blinking. The weak, formless way her bruised gaze traced his as she attempted to glare back.

Just long enough to impress this on him, she choked to heel her fury. Spent, collapsing, she clutched her blankets with hollowed arms, the fingertips purpled and blued. 

Necrovarus stood to look out at the hospice floor. “If anything can be done,” he said, “the price may be higher than this.”

Velorina made a sound no human should ever make. One of her hands went to her chest and clawed there viciously, something he’d seen more and more people doing lately, attempting to quell the heart pain.

“Nothing could be worse,” she whispered. “Hear me: no curse, no demon—” 

Her voice cracked and failed. In another sickbed nearby, someone who had been wheezing steadily throughout their stilted conversation stopped.

“If anything can be done.” Velorina jerked forward by the nose, assertive to the end. “Then _do it._ ”

* * *

The Ectofuntus wailed unhappily, that urgent, shivering howl of _it’s time, it’s time, now, now_. Necrovarus couldn’t twitch a finger. Could only spit insult and pin his angers with Velorina to this interloper. But when they left…

“Just long enough.” 

They bothered to plead with him. Even as their hand thrust the amulet forward, its slight, spiraling motions making the stone flicker, his debasement wasn’t complete for them yet. 

“Just let it get weak enough that they can leave. Think of this like—a fast. Then you can feed it again.” 

He didn’t have a choice. He had to comply. But the idea had a certain ascetic appeal. A fast. As though the things that happened in his temple were high, were holy. 

“If I and the acolytes weaken, we’ll become unable to,” he managed. 

“I’ll perform the ceremony until you can.” They made him this promise while listening to the Ectofuntus’ complaints, its betrayal like glass in his ears. They heard the pain too. Were made visibly unwell by it. “Let them leave and I’ll help.”

That was more than Necrovarus was capable of demanding under Haricanto’s subjugation. He was fortunate they seemed so committed to bargaining with a thrall. “You’ll have to command the others as well.” 

“Can’t you do it?” 

The Ectofuntus gave another soft, weak cry to the humid wind blowing through its sanctuary, and in spite of the living being guarding the way between them, several of his disciples listed toward the invitation.

“If you couldn’t tell,” Necrovarus said flatly. “No.”

* * *

When the hole opened inside of him, Necrovarus resisted. By sundown he felt about eleven naysayers disappear through their respective ruptures in the forcefield. 

Acolyte Yin looked to him often for permission to follow them, worn down and defeated by the Ectofuntus’ untended cries. He wouldn’t give it. Any power to restrain her had been stripped from him. If she desired an afterlife so strongly, the onus was on her to abandon the work.

And she did. Yin disappeared just in time for Velorina’s pissant to make good on their pledge.

They came early and left sooner, choosing to sleep somewhere far beyond the town. He enjoyed the hollowing of their face as proximity to the ectoplasm exacted its price, but he dismayed of whatever special fortitude left them alive. Perhaps if they’d sheltered in the Green Ghost. There was something wickedly prophetic about that place.

The Ectofuntus fasted four days, so it fed four days without reward. He’d taken to tracing its aura, waiting for the familiar resistance of corporeality, when he met with a faint texture, slick as hunger and less patient. 

“One more rite. Then, unless you were planning on staying,” Necrovarus said urgently. “Go.”

Leaning over The Ectofuntus' basin, they watched the meal dissolve, red pigment in glowing binder. “I was not,” they agreed, and unhooked another container from their belt, shaking the contents in. 

All at once, he didn't have to float. Choruses of relief echoed against the cornices. Necrovarus stopped them before they could complete the offering, half-bent toward their feet.

Slowly, they looked at the bo staff pinning the bucket of ectoplasm to the floor. They looked at the Ectofuntus. They looked at him.

“That was quick.”

“You’re done here.” He withdrew it, its end sucking free of the squirming liquid, and used it to raise the handle of the bucket. “I’ll finish.”

They shrugged and began to pack. Necrovarus refused to delay any further.

Dry meal still floated above the surface. He offered the remaining ectoplasm and stirred the dust under with his staff, forcing it to dissolve faster and coaxing a groan from the Ectofuntus.

In his periphery, the interloper froze. Coughed and hastened their departure, the blunt solidity of their shoes stomping across the northern atrium nearly musical.

“I’m sorry,” Necrovarus said, propping his staff against the lip. _But I knew you would survive._ He helped the remainder clinging to the white wood slop back into itself, rubbing it loose with his hands and coating his neck with the residue, relishing the sensations of pressure. _I’m not like Velorina. I have some faith._

A ghost approached on the opposite side. Acolyte Merrick, who hadn’t wasted his new strength on slim gestures.

“We apologize.” He'd retrieved and now eased a long bone into the Ectofuntus with careful reverence; something to consume more gradually between meals. Then, he flicked generous washes of its glow over his hands, mouth sighing open to accept the passage of a reward, beckoning him to do the same.

Necrovarus had possessed few inhibitions in life and refused to burden himself with them in death.

He submerged himself to the elbow, shuddering, the feeling volitive and warm where everything else was neither. The Ectofuntus moaned in request. He sank further and its waters rose to meet him, sluicing around his ribs like an embrace.

It pulsed wet lashes across the places where he was most corporeal; entered where those regions faded or became immaterial. Explored the intruding shapes of his forearms from outside and within.

Around the spout of its fountain, Acolyte Merrick fared little better, his shadow of a tongue phasing as it struggled under the crude appendage gagging him shut.

Necrovarus tutted disapprovingly to get his attention. For a brief moment, they shared the pleasure of a grin with no face. Then the Ectofuntus hummed, siphoning its basin's reservoir to fatten the thing in Acolyte Merrick’s mouth, and they were back to work.

Velorina and those electoralists with the copper slogans couldn’t appreciate a good thing if it bit them. Yin could do as she liked. Merrick and he knew which side their bread was buttered on.


End file.
